Don't tell onaldDay umpTray, but I have some foreigners as friends on Facebook. Being professional communicators, they're super literate. Being Europeans, they're super-literate in at least two languages.
Which sometimes makes me feel inferior—a feeling I don't like any more than the next exceptional American.
So I comfort myself, by reading Facebook's translations of my friends' posts in their native language.
"Politiske debatter er en lykke for demokratiet," Facebooked Jens Kjeldsen, an esteemed Norwegian rhetoric professor (and my international tennis rival and drinking buddy).
Intimidated by the serious-sounding statement, I clicked on "Translate."
"Political debates are a happiness for democracy."
Unless Jens is moonlighting as a ghostwriter of fortune cookies, I think we'll always need human translators. Does anyone doubt it?
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